54
WHAT
ANNE
DALAND
DID.
Anne was enjoying herself extremely. A little while before supper she was talking brightly with a little group of gentlemen gathered round her. Dr. Morris, unconsciously standing near, engaged in a conversation that bored him, heard some one say, “That is Miss Daland. Has she not an interesting face?”
He turned quickly, and for the first time during the evening saw Anne. Their eyes met, he bowed, and with a face full of pleasure, at once went toward her.
“This is such an unexpected pleasure, Miss Daland!”
Anne gracefully returned his salutation, with perhaps a slightly heightened color in her cheek.
“I am not sure, Miss Daland,” said he, “that I have a right to presume upon an introduction so informal as mine to you, and so long ago. But here comes Mrs. Ward, and she is looking this way. May I not ask her to introduce me in form. Miss Daland?” glancing back brightly toward her, as he went to meet Mrs. Ward and make his request.
“I am indignant, Walter,” said that lady, in answer to it. “You know that I meant to have the pleasure of introducing you to Miss Daland myBelf. Some one, I see, has forestalled me, and so you maliciously ask me to do it now, to teaze ine, I suppose, for being so dilatory. Who would believe that so ingenuous a face could conceal such malice? Do not let me interrupt your con¬ versation with Miss Daland, I pray you,” and with an assumed air of injured dignity, she turned away from him.
“What splendid verbenas, Anne!” she said, “you always wear natural flowers I have no¬ ticed,” and darting a quick look at Dr. Morris as she spoke, she left them.
“Mrs. Ward has refused my request, thinking it unnecessary. Perhaps it is just as well. She could not have equalled the way in which our poor friend Brett introduced you, simply as an angel, as if you had no earthly name. How strangely unfortunate I was in not meeting you there again!”
Anne replied, “You would not have said unfor¬ tunate, if you had not forgotten the affair with the sailor, and the long walk in the rain afterward, in consequence of meeting me there.”
“Pardon me,” said he, looking at her, “but it was because I did not forget the opportunity it gave me of defending you, or the walk with you, that I said ‘unfortunate.”
“Do you consider it your mission,” she an¬ swered, with a smile, “to go round like one of the knights of old——”
“Do say like Bayard, Miss Daland,” he interrupted, entreatingly.
She laughed. “Well then like ‘Bayard, sans peur et sans TeprocheJ defending poor, unprotected damsels?”
Walter was about to reply, when the door of the supper-room was thrown open, which diverted his attention. He had the pleasure of taking Anne out, and secretly congratulated himself on his good fortune, as he saw a gentleman, just approaching her for the same purpose, turn away with a disappointed air.
He devoted himself to her all the rest of the evening, thereby drawing down upon her the envy of divers young ladies present.
It was late when Mr Daland came to Anne and told her that the carriage was waiting for them. She bid Dr. Morris good evening, and taking her father’s arm was turning away, when she remembered that he had her fan, which he had been using in her service,
“Oh, Miss Daland!” he said with a tragic air, as at her request he handed it to her, “I was in hopes you would forget it.”
“Why?”
“So that I might call in a day or two, and return it.”
Anne laughed at his ingenuity, and gave him permission to call on her, without having her fan for a pretext.
He did call, and gradually became so frequent a visitor, that it became a matter of course. Mr. Daland quietly mAde inquiries as to the gentle- man’s character and prospects, and probably found them unexceptionable, for he did not for- bid the continuance of the calls. For Anne’s part, when any of her friends teased her about him, she always looked indignant, and answered with a good deal of dignity, and some warmth, that Dr. Morris and herself were “excellent friends, and that was all.”
They were excellent friends, undoubtedly: he lent her books to read from his library, frequently if dropped in of an evening, when she was playing to her father, “happening to pass by,” of course. At her request, he visited old Mr. Malone, whom she went once a week to read to, and, by his professional skill, helped him so, that occasionally he was able to walk out, which he had not done before for more than a year. And, in return, he told her of a poor family whom he had been called to see, who were really suffering from want. So Mrs. Daland and Anne interested themselves in them, found an employer for the husband, who was a gardener, and clothed the children up so, that every Sunday they might have been seen, with cheerful faces, in Anne’s
